Selfies are one of the most prominent phenomena of the burgeoning smart-phone era. Soon you may sign into your computer, your phone, your online accounts, and your favorite web services by snapping a picture of yourself. That shot will be tied to a social-media search to generate a score indicating how likely you are who the computer/system/application expects you to be.

In an October 11, 2015, post on TechCrunch, Jason Oxman, CEO of the Electronic Transactions Association, describes the Perceive “real-time facial biometrics product” developed by Socure, a vendor of identity-verification systems. Perceive matches a photo of your face with “media profile data” instantly. It is intended to replace passwords and to identify attempts to spoof the system with still photos by applying “liveliness checks.”

By combining the social-media search with its facial-recognition technology, Socure is able to authenticate people who don’t have online bank accounts and don’t perform other transactions online, but who do have a “healthy” social-media presence.

If they serve no other purpose, systems such as Perceive remind us of how public our social-media profiles have become, even when we’ve designated those profiles as “private.”